War-Weariness As an Excuse

We spend more per year on Medicare and Medicaid fraud than we spent on the war.

Hardly. The total cost for our post-9/11 wars, including indirect costs like medical care for veterans, is 3 to 4 trillion dollars. The total Medicare/Medicaid budget annually is a bit less than 800 billion, with fraud being maybe ten percent of that.

For decades in America politicians appealed to the Irish vote by twisting the British lion's tail, I think much the same has obviously transpired in American politics.

I think such an analogy, while conceptually valid, is too small to adequately reflect the American-Israeli dynamic. No one was going to advocate for honor killing based on which part of the Anglospere they favored.

You are not talking about just an ethnic group, here. An overt turn against Israel would be a repudiation of our very civilization, and a de facto invitation to the proselytizing barbarity that is Islam.

So far, we have managed to preserve a tense but workable balance. I do not believe it would be in the interest of our American Way Of Life to convincingly present ourselves as a "friend" to Islam for fear of the liberties such a friendship would invite.

You do realize that CounterPunch and Huffington Post would say precisely the sames things about Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Confederacy as you do.

Actually, they've moved on.

They would accuse Lincoln and Seward of being "part of the same hypocrisy."

They would probably characterize Forrest as being a victim of his own environment, and an inevitable product of America's capitalist system.

You see, for postmodern leftists - as well as for racial determinists - there are no absolute standards of right and wrong.

The whole "war is good for the economy" line is a Keynesian lie.

There is no iron law.

A war that opens up formerly closed markets is often good for an economy.

While I don't necessarily agree with the notion that warfare is always an economic stimulus, it is undeniable that quite a few of the dollars spent on warfare are circulated back into the US economy - it's not a pure loss of GDP and so assessing the financial cost of war solely as government payments is reductive.

This whole "our wars kept us safe from terrorism at home" line reminds me a bit of the rooster who thought that his crowing in the morning made the sun rise.

This is terrible reasoning.

Terrorism is an intentional human phenomenon, the rotation of the earth on its axis isn't.

Drawing out terrorists to fight you on your terms on foreign soil has strategic insight.

How many would-be terrorists decided to take the easier route of slipping into Iraq or Afghanistan to fight Americans than go through the more expensive, more time-consuming, and riskier exercise of trying to pull off an attack in the US?

It is a fact that our forces liquidated quite a few foreign adventurers in both countries.

You see, for postmodern leftists - as well as for racial determinists - there are no absolute standards of right and wrong.

Leftists often say "there is no absolute right or wrong" when it comes to matters related to sexual morality. However, these self-styled moral relativists suddenly become moral absolutists when it comes to condemning "racism". As do many watered down Republicans who have adopted their own form of political correctness and try to outdo the Left in accusing their political opponents of "racism."

By the same token, you could argue that the government giving money to any individual or entity could stimulate the economy because those dollars will eventually circulate into the broader market. Keynes claimed that during an economic downturn, it's worthwhile to pay somebody to dig a ditch and fill it back in because he'll spend his paycheck and stimulate the economy. The trouble is, no additional wealth is created in the process because you're using the same amount of money taken from person X to pay person Y to dig the ditch and fill it back in. Arguments against Keynesian stimulus in the civil sector apply just as well to military Keynesianism.

Terrorism is an intentional human phenomenon, the rotation of the earth on its axis isn't.

If the war was about fighting Islamic terrorism, why was the largest amount of resources committed to overthrowing a secular dictator in a country which (until after the war) had no Al-Quaeda presence? Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the nation most responsible for sponsoring and exporting Islamic extremism abroad, was coddled. As relevant as Iraq was to fighting Islamism and Al Quaeda, the whole enterprise may as well have been about the Earth's rotation.

I think we agree on the flaws of Keynesianism.

But paying someone to develop or refine new weapons systems is not the same thing as paying someone to dig a hole and fill it back in.

That kind of work often generates additive innovations.

If the war was about fighting Islamic terrorism

The war in Afghanistan was about terrorism.

The war in Iraq was about overthrowing a dictator who had committed various acts of war against the US that had not been responded to - and, realistically, it was about asserting US power in the center of Asia.

And, of course, it is just silly to refer to Hussein as a secularist.

One of his pet projects was building the world's largest mosque and one of his prize possessions was a Koran he had calligraphers write in his own blood.

On the issue of terrorism, Huessein had been sheltering Abu Nidal for a decade.

He was killed not long before the US invaded Iraq.

The reliably anti-American Robert Fisk alleges that he was killed because he was an American spy trying to falsely connect Hussein with Al-Qaeda.

More likely he was killed because he was the one link Hussein had with Al-Qaeda.

Al Quaeda and other Islamist groups had wanted to get rid of the Iraqi Bath party for years, because it was "un-Islamic" for, among other things, tolerating the existence of infidel faiths in Iraq and failure to impose Saudi-style Sharia law. So the notion that Hussein was supporting a group that wanted him eliminated and his party overthrown is far-fetched, the sort of grasping at straws that you get from an administration trying to sell the public a war under false pretenses.

When "Islamic Study Centers" are created in western cities to proselytize their radical and violent interpretation of Islam to Muslim immigrants, they are inevitably funded from Saudi Arabia, not from Iraq. It's no accident that most if the 9/11 hijackers and the leadership of Al Quaeda is Saudi, not Iraqi, and that Saudi Arabia has the strictest Sharia law and the least tolerance of non-Islamic faiths in the Arab world. Yet our elected officials hold the hands (literally) of the Saudi sponsors of radical Islam while waging a war in Iraq as a diversion, designed to convince people that "something" was being done to fight terrorism.

Your argument collapses upon itself.

You argue that the Iraqi government was not Islamist because Al-Qaeda supposedly did not approve of it.

You also argue that the Saudi government is Islamist, despite the fact that Al-Qaeda does not approve of it.

In fact, Al-Qaeda has tried to overthrow the Saudi government, while Al-Qaeda never tried to overthrow Hussein, but did ally themselves with his fedayeen after he was overthrown.

Clearly the Saudi government promotes their ideological agenda in the United States using their wealth.

Iraq would have done the same, I'm sure, had they the wealth and positive diplomatic relationship with the US that the Saudis have.

Iran would also do the same if it could.

Of course, by the criterion of Al-Qaeda disapproval, Iran's government would not be Islamist because of their heretical Shi'ism.

Do you think it was an accident that there were large Christian communities in Iraq until Hussein’s government was overthrown? The point isn’t that Nasser, Hussein, Assad, etc. are/were good people (you don’t find many of those in the Middle East), the point is that as a Christian or a secular Muslim, you’re better off under their rule than you are under Saudi-style Wahhabi Islam.

that there were large Christian communities in Iraq

They weren't that large, and they were much larger before he came to power.

They also served a diplomatic purpose.

the point is that as a Christian or a secular Muslim, you’re better off under their rule than you are under Saudi-style Wahhabi Islam

I don't see much difference. Under either regime you are a "hewer of wood and a drawer of water" - and far more Christians live and work in Saudi Arabia than ever did in Hussein's Iraq.

They are quasi-permanent residents, not citizens.

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